Friday, October 15, 2010

Guided By Voices - Beyond the Bars and Churches (1990s)

I guess you don't need me to inform you that this autumn has been a banner season for Guided By Voices fans, with the "classic" halcyon, mid-90s lineup of Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell reuniting for roughly twenty gigs across the country. Doug Gillard be damned. In fact, half of the heavily touted Hallway of Shatter-Proof Glass Tour has come and gone, and yours truly will be attending the Columbus, OH show at Outland Live tomorrow. It's going to be a capacity crowd, as are many of the remaining dates, but the band has recently launched Guided By Voices Digital, an online repository for the bulk of the GBV catalog, including concert recordings from the tour in progress, available for a nominal fee of course, so even if you can't see them live in the flesh you can at the very least live vicariously. Didn't have that option back in '95, did ya?

In 2007 and 2008 I shared two fan-curated bootleg compilations of GBV outtakes, miscellanea, and the like, To Trigger a Synapse, and The Carefree Kitchens Are a Blast, respectively. Many of you did in fact find these to be a blast, and in conjunction with the tour in progress, I'm unleashing yet a third, like-minded compendium dubbed Beyond the Bars and Churches (it's title swiped from a lyric in "Taco, Buffalo, Bird Dog, and Jesus" if I recall). This time around there's not a great deal of quality studio material, and in fact Beyond... yields little that's revelatory in that regard, yet it's a downright fun listen, chockablock with anecdotal interview segments, tv performances, concert banter, numerous random live cuts, and even a Guess Who cover - almost all of which is culled from the band's heyday, which I'm more than happy to revisit as I'm sure you are. Also be advised of the two GBV tribute albums I've been hosting, Scalping the Guru and Blatant Doom Trip, and be on the lookout for at least one more tribute collection on here before years end. Dig in!

14 comments:

dig yr site, but wanted to offer that given pollard's undying allegiance to the who, you might want to refer to "shakin all over" as a who cover (it's on "live at leeds"), however, it's actually by johnny kidd and the pirates. a killer early-60s brit band whose guitarist mick green just passed.

1. Once this cheapskate free-user downloads something else from Rapidshare, I will check this out.

2. Of the other two comps, Synapse was much better quality than what I had on cassette and the other was, uh, revelatory.

3. Somehow I had missed that this reunion really was the classic band -- that is, with the great Tobin Sprout.

4. Thanks for the tip on the new GBVdigital website. The immense output of Pollard material forced me off the bandwagon, so it's good to see there might be an easy way for me to fill in those holes that I want to fill (sounds disturbingly sexual).

When I download these comps, they are set up to open in Internet Explorer. When I try to open, nothing happens. I tried opening them with iTunes and Windows Media and nothing happened then either. Any ideas?

Hey Captain. When you unzip the folder everything should be in MP3 format, so if you can normally play MP3s in the applications you mentioned these should function normally. Maybe your download was corrupt, which means you may want to try grabbing it again.

Great compilation. FYI - The tracks you have listed as 'Piano Piece X3 - Tobin' is actually fragments of 'Boeing Spacearium' by The Minus 5. Bob sings backing vox on this song (as you can tell) on their album 'The Lonesome Death Of Buck McCoy'. The Minus 5 is Scott McCaughey (of Young Fresh Fellows fame) band.

It's me again... Still wondering if you have GBV's Carry On: Side Dishes & Leftovers compilation or the Do the Collapse demos. If feverishly hunting down the demo for "Powerblessings"... Let me know if you get a sec. Thanks!